Exploiting stellar explosion induced by the QCD phase transition in large-scale neutrino detectors

Understand

The centers of the core-collapse supernovae are one of the densest environments in the Universe.

• Under such conditions, it is conceivable that a first-order phase transition from ordinary nuclear matter to the quark-gluon plasma occurs.
• This transition releases a large amount of latent heat that can drive a supernova explosion and may imprint a sharp signature in the neutrino signal.
• We show how this snap feature, if observed at large-scale neutrino detectors, can set competitive limits on the neutrino masses and assist the localization of the supernova via triangulation.